Waugh Revpark SR11 2

Offprint frOm The Silk Road 11 (2013). The Silk Road is an annual publicatiOn Of the silkrOad fOundatiOn, supplied in a print versiOn tO academic libraries and alsO freely available On the internet. the cOmplete vOlume 11 is available On-line at <http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/vol11/srjournal_v11.pdf>. infOrmatiOn abOut submissiOns tO the jOurnal is available at <http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/vol8/SilkRoadinstructionsforauthors.pdf>. EXPANDING GEOGRAPHIC HORIZONS ALONG THE MARITIME SILK ROAD Daniel C. Waugh University of Washington, Seattle Hyunhee Park. Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-modern Asia. Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xxviii, 276 pp. ISBN 978-1-107-01868-6. ark’s book is a revision of her Yale dissertation one can appreciate her consicious decision for practi- P (supervised by Valerie Hansen). She sets out “to cal reasons of scope not to treat South and Southeast understand the extent of the geographic knowledge Asia, this then has to compromise what she says about that existed between two of the principal actors that the ways in which knowledge was transmitted. More- created this interconnected world of Asia, namely over, if Richthofen seemed to focus too much on over- China and the Islamic world, as well as the processes land routes, Park consciously chooses to do the re- by which they gained this knowledge over centuries verse, emphasizing the maritime connections. This is of continuous contact” (p. 1) Specifi cally, her ques- in fact a welcome change in emphasis from traditional tions include: “What geographic information can be treatments of “the Silk Roads.” However, too often gleaned from Arabic and Chinese narratives: What her downgrading of overland contacts seems forced, are the formats and genres of geographic and travel especially when she is discussing transmission of im- writing that present these bits of information? What is portant knowledge that explicitly arrived via over- their status as fact or fi ction, and how can we evaluate land contacts. On the Chinese end, the south is privi- that status? What new information can we fi nd in each leged; the areas controlled by the northern dynasties period, and how can we interpret it within the context after the fall of the Tang largely ignored. In the Islamic of the Sino-Islamic contacts? What are the possible world, Inner Asia gets short shrift (even if some of the conduits of new information about other societies? key intellectuals such as Mahmud al-Kashgarī and al- Finally, in what ways did increased cross-cultural un- Bīrūnī, whom she discusses, were from Central Asia). derstanding broaden the overall world view of these Another aspect of Park’s approach which deserves two societies and lead to further cross-cultural con- emphasis involves her method for analyzing informa- tact?” (p. 13) In addition to textual sources, she con- tion in her sources. While she is concerned to provide siders material and visual evidence, especially maps. a sense of context for the various sources, in the fi rst She brings to this agenda enviable linguistic ability in instance her criterion for their value is a modern one: the major East Asian languages, Arabic, French, and she specifi es (p. 203, n.4), “when I refer to ‘precise’ or at least some Persian. The agenda is ambitious, the re- ‘accurate’ depictions, I mean those that are in accord sults somewhat uneven. with our modern-day understanding.” Fair enough, While it is true that the book “is the fi rst to treat both but the resulting treatment of the material largely is sides of the exchange equally, using a comparative a positivist one, often expressed in wishful thinking analysis of major primary sources in Chinese, Arabic, about how a given source somehow might be con- and Persian,” in a sense her task is the same one Ferdi- strued as evidence of a march toward greater under- nand von Richthofen and a good many of his follow- standing, deeper knowledge or the like. In the fi rst ers set when initiating the study of what he termed instance here, the emphasis is on how political and “the Silk Roads.” The emphasis here is on great em- economic considerations fueled a conscious effort to pires/civilizations. For Richthofen it was Han China learn more about those on the other end of Asia. One and Rome; for Park it is China and the Islamic worlds, might wish that she had tried to enter more deeply even if at various times fragmented politically. One into the thought world of those who produced, quot- consequence of this approach then is to downplay ed or copied the sources. To have done so might have what comes between the bookends of Asia. While widened our appreciation of how the old and the new The Silk Road 11 (2013): 200–214 200 Copyright © 2013 Daniel C. Waugh Copyright © 2013 The Silkroad Foundation often were combined in incompatible ways (if we we should not necessarily believe the secret of pa- judge by a standard of progress toward deeper and per manufacture came to the Islamic world only as more accurate knowledge), and how in some cases the a consequence of that battle.1 In the interpretation evidence reveals not how much people knew but rath- here (p. 29), the Arab-Chinese confl ict in Inner Asia er how little. Insofar as there are problems here, they and the Tang withdrawal there and replacement by arise most frequently in the treatment of the relation- other polities (notably Tibet) meant the cutting off ship between text and image, a matter to be discussed of the overland routes and stimulated the rise of the more fully below. maritime routes in the later Tang period. One might well ask whether “this situation” in Central Asia (as Park divides the material by three major chrono- opposed to the Arab conquest of Sogdiana) then ex- logical periods — 750–1260, 1260–1368, and 1368–1500 plains “the disappearance of non-Chinese groups like — and within them treats fi rst Chinese perceptions of the merchant Sogdians.”2 It is helpful to know that the Islamic world and then the converse, the percep- Du Huan’s “remarkably accurate and rich knowledge tions of China in the Islamic world. To a considerable about the Islamic world” may largely refl ect what he degree her periodization relates to the developments saw in Kufa, but the implication that one might then in maritime connections between east and west Asia, generalize from that perspective to other parts of the which as she notes, grew steadily after 750. Within that Islamic world is a bit misleading. Moreover, even if fi rst period, initially the contacts seem mainly to have he conveyed a vague understanding of the vast extent been in the hands of Muslims who came to China, but of Arab conquests, at least from the evidence present- in successive sub-periods, while there was a growth of ed here there is no indication he was specifi c about Chinese “direct” contact, trade came to involve inter- those conquests having reached as far as the Iberian mediaries, with, she argues, a consequent decline in peninsula. Indeed, Park to some extent seems to con- the transmission of information. She emphasizes what tradict herself when she appropriately indicates that we have long known that the Mongol/Yuan period Du Huan’s “Western Sea” probably meant for him the represented the acme of cross-Asian exchange of Persian Gulf. knowledge, but unlike many others who have focused on the Mongols as an overland empire, she stresses Of primary importance for expanding Chinese their interest in the maritime trade. One could quibble knowledge of the West as maritime trade blossomed as to whether 1368 (the end of the Yuan) is the best was a description called “The Route to the Foreign dividing point between her second and third periods, Countries across the Sea from Guangzhou” (Guang- given the fact that in the fi rst third of the 15th century zhou tong haiyi dao 廣州通海夷道) compiled around there were such important exchanges between the the year 800 CE by Jia Dan 賈耽 and included in the Timurids and Ming, and given the evidence of the New History of the Tang Dynasty (Xin Tangshu 新唐書). Ming “treasure fl eets.” Most would agree that a peri- This is “the earliest extant document from either od of decline in cross-Asian contacts followed, leading China or the Islamic world that describes the maritime up to the appearance of the Europeans in the Indian route between Guangzhou and the Persian Gulf” (p. Ocean. Of course, as we know, even that supposedly 32). Park conveniently illustrates on a schematic dia- game-changing event has come under scrutiny from gram the main places he mentioned, which seem to the standpoint of its impact on both the Indian Ocean connect to two itineraries, one East-West and the other exchange and the fate of the overland routes. coming up from the east African coast and intersect- ing with it. Undoubtedly the itineraries refl ect infor- Even though, as Park readily acknowledges, there mation obtained from Muslim merchants or sailors. has been substantial scholarly attention to individual She nicely juxtaposes (pp. 30–31) this scheme with a texts, for many readers her summaries and quotations map illustrating locations in the Indian Ocean world from eyewitness sources or the surviving compilations where fi nds of 8th–10th century Chinese ceramics have that quoted them will be new and most welcome. One been made, providing physical documentation of the might wish, of course, for an appendix (or compan- trade.3 ion volume) with full texts in translation, and in some More problematic than Jia Dan’s textual descrip- cases, parallel textual comparisons would have best tion is his Map of Chinese and Non-Chinese Territories illustrated borrowings and edits from one source to in the World (Hainei huayi tu 海內華夷圖), which has another.

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